In order to achieve our university’s mission of cultivating professionals who contribute to the sustainable development of society and industry, we incorporate the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into our curriculum design and faculty research. We focus on promoting four specific SDGs: SDG 4: Quality Education, SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, and SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production. In the following sections, we describe how we integrate these development goals to implement sustainability in our curriculum planning, faculty contributions, and social impact through outcomes related to curriculum, outcomes related to scholarship, and outcomes related to internal and external initiatives and/or activities.

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1.Implementation of SDG 4: Quality Education

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SDG 4: Quality Education aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Our college has mainly focused on Target 4.5, ensuring that all learners are taught by qualified, professionally-trained, motivated, and well-supported.

 

For example, our faculty members are devoted to innovative teaching to improve students’ learning quality and thereby have a total of 35 Teaching Practice Research Projects granted from 2018-2022, implying that there were 35 courses undergoing innovative teaching methods for the past 5 years. Moreover, our university has been awarded Teaching Excellence Program by the Ministry of Education for 12 consecutive years with a total amount of $75 million, indicating that FCU’s teaching quality has been officially recognized for the past 12 years and FCU is the best one among all private universities during these years.

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2.The Implementation in SDG 7:Affordable and Clean Energy
 

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy aims to ensure that all people have access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy. Our college has mainly focused on Target 7.4, promoting access to research, technology, and investments in clean energy. As part of our college’s Goal 4, which is to collaborate with industries for sustainable and societal impact, we have developed curriculum and research directions.

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For example, graduate students in the Department of Economics taking the courses Resource Economics and Applied Macroeconomics learn how to apply big data to achieve electricity and energy savings, using the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology as a case study. As for scholarship outcomes, the Economics Department's Professor Lin Ya-Chi and Professor Ho Si-Hsien, in collaboration with Pinfan Technology Co., Ltd., carried out a project entitled “Implementation Strategy for Automatic Control of Air Conditioning Load Planning.” This project assists the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology in planning the implementation of automatic control of air conditioning loads to achieve energy savings, reduce peak demand, and lower electricity expenses.

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The outcomes pertaining to internal and external initiatives and/or activities include providing the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology with energy-saving recommendations and proposing an automatic control strategy for air conditioning loads. This strategy is projected to reduce electricity expenses by 5%. Moreover, the success of the first project phase, which focused on evaluating the implementation strategy for the automatic control of air conditioning load, led to the granting of a second-phase industry–university research project entitled “Planning the Implementation Strategy for Automatic Control of Air Conditioning Load.”

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The Department of Finance has developed a patented system to assess the future value of solar power plants. Professor Zhuang Ming-Zhe, along with Zhang An-Xing and Yin Zhe-Li from Guangteng Renewable Energy Co., Ltd., and Professor Lin Shi-Gui from the Department of Finance at National Chengchi University, collaborated to create a solar power plant value evaluation system, which received a new patent (number M634378).

 

3.The Implementation in SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

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SDG 8 is dedicated to promoting sustainable and inclusive economic growth, achieving full and productive employment, and ensuring decent work for all. Our college is committed to contributing to Target 8.6 of SDG 8 by supporting youth employment, education, and training. For instance, our Bachelor’s Program of Business integrates a marketing management course with a freshmen project, which provides first-year students with a solid understanding of the basic concepts related to business. This course is designed to foster students’ ability to innovate in product/service design and development while also instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in them. We further encouraged students to engage in entrepreneurial activities after the class. In academic year 2022, two students were successfully guided to establish their own company, Eazy Duck and Talentek, through this program.

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Moreover, our college launched the Corporate Sustainability Credit Program. One of the courses offered under this program is ESG Sustainability Report Review Practice, which aims to develop students’ skills in reviewing corporate sustainability reports and help them obtain relevant certifications. In addition, Professor Hou-ju Chen teaches the Corporate Sustainability Report Practice course, which provides students with practical experience and knowledge of global sustainability development. After completing this course, Huang Zi-yin, a second-year master’s student in the Department of Cooperative Economics and Social Entrepreneurship, secured a position at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Sustainability Service Company Ltd., where she provides sustainability and climate change consulting services to businesses. Similarly, Chiu Hsien-pin, an undergraduate student in the same department, was also hired at PwC Taiwan before graduation after taking this course.

 

4.    The Implementation in SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production

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SDG 12 aims to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns. The initiatives taken by our college are especially dedicated to Target 12.5 (reducing waste generation), Target 12.6 (adopting sustainable practices and integrating sustainability information into the reporting cycle), and Target 12.8 (ensuring sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature) of SDG 12.

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During the past two years, a total of 145 students and 4 graduate students participated in the Social Enterprise course to promote Target 12.5. As part of this initiative, they visited the Green Life Farm in Meixi Tribe, Nantou, to revitalize the community. They introduced the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), which is promoted by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM), and combined it with cutting-edge technologies such as AI, AR, and others from Feng Chia University. They established a network platform to facilitate sales and promote the most precious and valuable natural farming methods of the indigenous people to the outside world through a viable business model. The ultimate goal of this endeavor is to drive sustainable development of the environment and the tribe.

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Professor Hao Wang, from the Department of Cooperative Economics and Social Entrepreneurship, led the Participatory Guarantee System for Tribe Revitalization Project under Feng Chia University’s USR program from January 2020 to December 2022. He shared the project’s outcomes through advocacy and column articles published in CommonWealth Magazine. In addition, he contributed to an international symposium organized by APEC on September 16, 2022, where he collaborated with 60 participants from seven different countries.

Under the leadership of Professor Hao Wang, our teachers’ and students’ engagement in the Participatory Guarantee System for Tribe Revitalization Project has yielded impressive results. The natural ingredients from Green Life Farm have been selected for use in the ecological chef’s state banquet and purchased by the Yunpin International Hotel in the Sun Moon Lake National Scenic Area, which spends approximately $13,000 on food ingredients annually. The hotel has also organized nearly 20 ecological interpretation activities, helping to restore nearly 20 hectares of abandoned land for friendly farming. Two students from our college have assisted in farming and introduced digital sales models. Through Facebook community sales and online live streaming models, the tribe has generated nearly $120,000 in annual revenues, including income from agriculture, visits, and catering. This revenue has restored more than twice the natural farmland and provided approximately $13,000 worth of healthier and higher-value food ingredients for the elderly people in the tribe. The project has also attracted stakeholders such as companies to participate in ESG advocacy. In addition, Professor Hao Wang has assisted the Green Life Farm in collecting evidence of ecological diversity for use by other tribes. The core recognition engine can already identify ladybugs, flies, spiders, bees, dragonflies, locusts, butterflies, moths, ants, and mantises with a 98.18% accuracy rate using Faster-RCNN.